Industrial Energy Consumption in Northeast China under the Revitalisation Strategy: A Decomposition and Policy Analysis

He Li, Kevin Lo, Mark Wang, Pingyu Zhang and Longyi Xue
Additional contact information
He Li: Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, Jilin, China
Kevin Lo: Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, China
Mark Wang: School of Geography, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
Pingyu Zhang: Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, Jilin, China
Longyi Xue: School of Geography, Shanxi Normal University, Linfen 041000, Shanxi, China

Energies, 2016, vol. 9, issue 7, 1-13

Abstract: While previous studies have examined China’s changing industrial energy consumption at the national level, this study argues that it is more useful, from a policy standpoint, to conduct a regional-level analysis owing to the significant regional disparity in industrialisation in the country. This study focuses particularly on Northeast China, where the implementation of the Northeast Revitalisation Strategy in 2003 has contributed to rapid reindustrialisation, which has a serious implication for industrial energy consumption. We decompose the region’s energy consumption changes into activity, structure, and intensity effects. Our results show that the intensity effect is not the only negative factor impacting industrial energy consumption during 2003–2012. The structure effect also has a negative impact on industrial energy consumption between 2005 and 2012. However, the negative impact of the two factors is weakening and not strong enough to counter the positive impact of the activity effect. This result highlights the problem of uncoordinated policy-making in Northeast China. The development strategy, which still depends highly on traditional heavy industries, is in conflict with the national strategy of energy conservation. The two conflicting objectives of industrial revitalization and energy conservation must be reconciled for sustainability in the long term. The study concludes with policy recommendations on how to achieve such reconciliation.

Keywords: energy conservation; industrial revitalisation; rustbelt; northeast China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/7/549/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/7/549/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:9:y:2016:i:7:p:549-:d:74139

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().